Happy 100th birthday, Santa Fe, New Mexico

By Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP

Yeah, we know that officially Santa Fe, NM is more than 400 years old.  But the Santa Fe that most people know -- the home of what's known in design as the Santa Fe Style -- dates from the first part of the 20th century.

As we reported in "How planning turned a dusty village into an international icon," the Santa Fe that celebrates adobe houses, Native American art, and Spanish/Mexican/Pueblo inspired food started in the early 1900s.   In 1912, these ideas became a foundation for the city's policies to this day.

The New Mexico Museum of Art exemplifies Santa Fe Style

By doing this, Santa Fe's leaders started the modern creative placemaking movement.  Of course, it wasn't the first time that city leaders used art to enhance their community.  That had been going on since the birth of the municipal art movement in the mid-19th century, which morphed into the  City Beautiful at the turn of the century .

But Santa Fe was different.  "Although originating within the nationwide City Beautiful movement, Santa Fe's plan was innovative in that it merged the movement's emphasis on order and refinement with the revival of a local style,"  say Janet Chapman and Karen Barrie in Kenneth Milton Chapman: A Life Dedicated to Indian Arts and Artists. 

In other words, rather than just promote the high arts and build romanticized replicas of ancient Greek and Roman communities, leaders in Santa Fe saw the existing landscapes, cultures and diversity in the place as assets.